The Relief Well Injection Spool (RWIS) designed to enable pumping of up to 200 barrels per minute of kill mud through a single relief well (illustration: Add Energy/Trendsetter Engineering Inc.)

Add Energy and Trendsetter Engineering Inc. have combined their expertise in well control engineering and equipment design to develop the Relief Well Injection Spool (RWIS). The RWIS is designed to enable pumping of up to 200 barrels per minute of kill mud through a single relief well utilising multiple vessels as opposed to the conventional method of multiple relief wells.

In regions such as Norway, where the governing regulatory agency only grants permit to drill wells that can be killed with a single relief well, the RWIS will provide a strategic solution that will enable drilling of both shallow and deep prolific reservoirs. In some cases, the RWIS may provide a tangible cost reduction in the range of USD 2 million by omitting a casing string to reduce dynamic kill requirements in the event of a blowout.

The RWIS is designed to be installed on a relief well prior to intersecting the blowout well and would be positioned between the wellhead and the blowout preventer (BOP), effectively becoming a subsea injection manifold providing additional inlets for pumping kill mud. Each of these inlets is equipped with dual fail-safe barrier valves to provide the necessary means of pressure containment in the relief well.

During the well kill operation, one or more high-pressure pumping vessels located near the relief well rig will be connected to the RWIS inlets using high pressure flexible flowlines to provide the additional mud fluid. The RWIS can be rapidly deployed by air, ground and marine freight to any region of the world.

As a result of the projected solution provided to drilling operations, the RWIS has already been requested for specific wells in Norway and the USA, and will be available to the market by the end of 2016.

Tags: add energy, Trendsetter Engineering Inc.